TITLE:
The Spiritual Ballast of Qing Scholars in Classical Gardens Based on Six Chapters of a Floating Life
AUTHORS:
Xiao Lei
KEYWORDS:
Classical Garden, Scholar Landscape, Six Chapters of a Floating Life, Spiritual Ballast
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.5 No.10,
October
31,
2017
ABSTRACT: Ancient Chinese scholars considered the nature as the philosophical proposition
of life’s reflective objects and applied it in life. The passions of human
(pleasure, anger, sorrow and joy) often come from the natural landscapes.
Lao-Zhuang philosophy proposed the philosophical view of advocating the
nature and laid the natural landscape garden culture foundation. Meanwhile,
this acts on the landscapes of scholars. Chinese paintings and classical garden
culture are important constituent parts in traditional Chinese culture. Both of
them have a close relation. The former has the spiritual pursuit beyond the
world, while the latter endows spirit with entity, hoping for being a hermit in
the world. Beginning with theory of paintings, garden appreciation and garden
interest shown in Six Chapters of a Floating Life, the author studied Shen
Fu and his wife’s comprehension on paintings, their contact details with
scholars in the same era, as well as life interest and life attitude in gardens,
trying to understand spiritual ballast of Qing scholars displayed in classical
gardens through small ones.